Unceded

Offered with humility to people whose suffering I can't begin to comprehend, whose history I am only just learning, whose ancestors mine harmed and benefited from the harming of.

****

Unceded But seeded  With colonizer men building brick homes Raping the land Rapeseed, precious naming Blocking, trapping, Wrapping the First Peoples in swaths of settlement

Unceded 

But seeded 

With Bibles flung into the wild,

Relentlessly paced, chased, erased

(Rendered unchaste by word or deed)

Mother Earth needs become Mother Mary

Jesus Glooscap

Trickster Lucifer

Unceded

But seeded 

With others brought from other lands,

Brought in chains, bonds, ties and obligations,

Come from the South, free but

Cast out. Neglected, detested,  

Rewarded for loyalty 

With mud and rocks,

Sticks and stones.

Unceded 

But seeded

With “moral” men molding minds

with whips, women withholding water and food,

Cutting hair, cutting off ties,

Cutting out words

Bleaching souls and 

Bending knees

And burying mistakes.

Unceded

But seeded 

With generations of hate, 

Denial, violence and defiling,

Women missing, children dead

Shrugs and crosses, 

Shaking heads

Praying hands

Preying beds.

Unceded,

But seeded. 

Unseen now seen.

Alienation turned to

 Reconciliation?